As others mentioned, this has been attempted in various ways, but not really succeeded. Perhaps it could though if done properly. I am skeptical though and thin

As others mentioned, this has been attempted in various ways, but not really succeeded. Perhaps it could though if done properly. I am skeptical though and think something else is needed. First is some form of legal ju-jitsu. If you are sued by a patent troll, you need to make it so they have no chance of stopping your business. One possibility is to dissolve and reform your company in some manner, perhaps moving it to another jurisdiction in the process. This would at minimum cause a lot more work for trolls. It also causes hassle for you, but perhaps a business model could be built around this - imagine if your small startup could be legally dissolved and recreated, with all current legal structure in places like equity, somewhere else, perhaps as a division of a larger company. With the option to reform as an independent company whenever you want. Just moving around would make troll's lives much harder, and this could be much cheaper than fighting in the courts. Another interesting idea is, as mentioned by others, that you can be sued for patent infringement even for products you use but didn't make. Everyone uses Windows or OS X, and they surely infringe many (ridiculous) patents, so even patent trolls are vulnerable to this. Microsoft and Apple do provide protection though, so this might be problematic.